A Stroke of Luck and Other Things

One of the most disappointing things almost happened to me recently: All of my files of writing, every piece of it, while unorganized, it was almost all lost. I'm not one for superstition, and I'll believe one stroke of luck is coincidence, but there are some things that simply go beyond lucky. I'll be the first to admit, I'm not the most interested in writing. I'd love to go into a field of music, and I've got an ear for it too. Then again, most of what I'm looking into isn't serious at all- I'm a Junior in High School, but my path isn't exactly paved in yellow bricks (Wizard of Oz reference). What has me in such awe is this:

About two weeks ago, my laptop was struck with a nasty virus. It completely shut down my entire system unless if I were to buy an "approved" Window's anti-virus product, which required a full name and credit card, PIN included. No, I wasn't stupid enough to punch in my numbers, but I was desperate. Everything I had worked for was on my computer, and if they had truly become corrupt, I would've been seriously depressed. Luckily, one of my family friends is a huge computer wiz, mostly because she works with them all the time teaching classes in a school. She was about to go on a vacation overseas, which I'm still jealous of, and I was just in time to get her help. If not, I was ready to reluctantly toss this computer into the garbage, and reluctantly start working on the ancient piece of work we called a "computer" downstairs. Of all days, though, she was there in the nick of time and knew exactly how to get the system rebooted and get the virus off. So, there's Stroke of Luck #1.

Stroke of Luck #2 is a bit more of a long shot. I'm the only person in my family that uses a laptop. My parents use a fancy touch-screen one, and as you can see above, they don't think I can operate it without breaking it. True, maybe, but not completely. Anyways, about a week ago, my cord broke for the charger. This model is at least two years old, and the company had moved on from this model. They had no chargers to order, and I couldn't think of where I had bought the computer, so I couldn't get a warranty or any sort of refund. Again, my files were at risk. My flashdrive with the writing files had gone AWOL, and all of my files were on my now-dead computer. I was again close to losing it, when my English teacher had asked about the type of charger (It was relevant to the conversation). I had remembered the model number from my searches, and so he was as amazed as I was that the school's Computers on Wheels (nicknamed CoWs) used the same type of charger. I talked with someone from the Tech department and I was able to buy a spare one from the school. It's still running strongly, and again my files were saved.

Going back to the AWOL flashdrive, Stroke of Luck #3 involves that very flash drive. And Water. And Detergent. And not to mention a pair of jeans. This was the first time I had forgotten about it, in my pocket, and gladly I had taken up the practice of hand-writing in its absence, and when I stumbled upon it, along with two dollars and three dollars the very next day, I was completely shocked to see that it still worked- all of my files were there, able to be accessed and opened as if it had never been touched. As one of my friends would say, "Taking it like a boss."

So, I've determined now that either I'm the luckiest SOB in the world, or something's screaming "WRITE, YOU FOOL!" I'm going to stick with the latter.